


Waking Of The Witch

by Lunarium



Category: Giant Robo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family, Gen, Magic-Users
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-01-23 13:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21321007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/pseuds/Lunarium
Summary: Left to raise Sunny alone, Alberto finds a mentor when Sunny’s magic begins to emerge, unaware just how this one decision will later come to impact the fate of the world.
Relationships: Alberto & Sunny the Magician
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Waking Of The Witch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarsDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarsDragon/gifts).

> Happy Yuletide!

Eyes of a scorching shade of amber drew him towards her, bright and glimmering from the charter marks she conjured around the cup in her hand. 

“Come here often?” she asked with a little twitch to the side of her mouth that meant she already knew the answer to her own question. 

Smoke, glittering with tiny charter marks, drifted up to light his cigar, and Alberto slid onto the seat across from her, his own smirk mirroring her own. 

\------

Three years later, their daughter Sunny was born. 

Alberto watched as his wife tugged Sunny back into the crib. A thin stream of charter marks accompanied her soft singing, disappearing into thin air right above the infant. Alberto thought he saw the veins of her tiny eyelids spark electric blue, but it was gone as soon as it had come. His wife straightened her back, fingernails tapping gently against the crib. 

“Bestowing our daughter with a bit of your magic?” Alberto asked as he followed her out of the baby’s room. “I thought your kind were born with the ability.” 

“We are born with the gift, yes,” she said. Her voice jingled with light laughter. “But one must awaken what is innate.” 

“I see.” 

“Any tidings with the Oil Dollar Society?” 

“Since when has my job been of any interest to you?” 

Another one of those coy, knowing smiles. “Always, Alberto. Recently the company has been a frequent image in my dreams. Change is coming, and fast. I would strongly reconsider altering my loyalties to Big Fire if I were you.” 

“Big Fire? Sally, are you out of your mind?” 

Sliding to their shared room, she pulled something out of the closet before heading, to Alberto’s surprise, to the front of the house. Slipping on her coat, she turned back. “I have some business to attend to myself. Take care of Sunny while I’m away, and make sure my brother stays out of trouble.” 

Hand on the doorknob, she looked back. “Oh! Have I given my daughter enough magic for the time I’ll be away? I believe I have. See you another time, Alberto.” 

\------

Big Fire swallowed the Oil Dollar Society, just as Sally had dreamt. But as to her whereabouts, Alberto never found out. Sally never returned home, and Alberto could find nothing on the fate of one Sally Cervantes. 

Alberto raised their daughter Sunny by himself. The daily mundanities of changing diapers, feeding her, and playing with her were simple enough, and his new quarters with Big Fire allowed for him to bring a small child to meetings (earmuffs provided for the more confidential talks, as if a baby could understand their conversation). 

But as time passed he worried as another matter took his notice. Without Sally bestowing charter magic over their daughter, Alberto passed off her future as either forever being innate or she would slowly grow to her full witch potential without much aid from her mother. What he did not anticipate was walking into her room one morning to find the toddler bed bursting into an array of magic, charter marks glittering everywhere, nor nearly being crushed by a flying bookshelf torn from the wall the following morning, nor nearly being impaled by the kitchen knife while preparing dinner the following evening.

He had to do something. But without another magician like Sally around, not even her brother, Alberto had only one other he could turn to. 

\------

“My forever gratitude at you coming here,” Alberto said with a bow to his guest. 

Hanzui waved him away. “Just helping out a friend. Now, where is Sunny?” 

A tiny head popped from around the doorway leading to the kitchen. She regarded Hanzui uneasily as if uncertain this meeting was a punishment. 

Getting on one knee, Hanzui motioned to her. “Hello, there. Remember who I am?”

Sunny nodded. “Am I in trouble?” 

“Oh, no, dear!” Hanzui laughed. “I’m here to help. Your father tells me your magic has been awakened, and you’ve been having a little bit of difficulty with it, is that right?” 

Sunny glanced over her shoulder, where dinner plates and display cases and bookshelves and porcelain statues and vases all lay in piles of broken heap. And all because she _dreamed_, Alberto said. He wasn’t angry at her; just thankful none of the objects had collided with her, nor him, while she was sleeping. Still, the guilt at having made such a mess filled her eyes as she swept from the pile of rubble, to her father, then to Hanzui. 

“Is that what you’re sad about?” Hanzui chuckled. “You should hear of the mess your father and I made when we were your age.”

Alberto nodded and extended out his arm, demonstrating as he absorbed energy into his awaiting hand, shockwaves pulsating from his palm. Hanzui next demonstrated by drawing power from within himself; Sunny watched, mesmerized, as the windows of her house rattled and water atop the stove boiled, and a whirl appeared before Hanzui when, with the merest will of his mind, the whirlpool of energy dispersed, sparing both the house and Sunny. 

“We’ve both since learned how to control our powers,” Hanzui said, looking up. “Would you like to learn as well, Sunny?” 

“Yes, please!” she begged.

\------

Magic had a funny way of filling every corner of the Earth. Many were born with an innate ability to control some element, and only that singular thing—Alberto could control shockwaves, and his friend Cervantes could read minds. But then there were those like Cervantes’s sister Sally who was filled with magic—a true magician. All of the world’s secrets just sitting at the tips of their fingers. 

Others were terrified of such holders of magic. Witches. Magicians. Warlocks. The list of names goes on. 

And where possessing the power of one element granted a human incredible strength, the power of the entire world..._well_. 

If Hanzui and Alberto had made a mess the first time their abilities manifested, Sunny had to count herself lucky for her father reacting as calmly as he had when her own powers began to manifest.

Hanzui and she began their training that same afternoon. Hanzui had her perform some spells, unrefined as they were, and observed her style of magic, as Western and Eastern magic were unalike and he needed first to gain a better sense of them. 

\------

“I believe I’ve found the source of Sunny’s trouble,” Hanzui informed Alberto later that evening. “Her magic is an all a chaotic whirl inside her. Without any direction it’ll only grow more unruly until she’s lost all ability to control them. She will need a mentor.” 

Lifting his cigar away from his lips, Alberto exhaled out a long smoke. “And Sally’s not been seen anywhere.” 

“She may not need her mother.”

“What do you mean?” 

“She can be my apprentice.” 

“Will she understand your kind of magic?” 

“It will be like speaking different languages—difficult at times, but not impossible. I believe I can help her.” 

\------

“Focus.” 

Seven chakras. 

Every human possessed them. Located on the endocrine glands, they served as much as a spiritual gateway as well as biological functions. Sunny was to learn how to properly close and open each chakra to better utilize her magic. That, Hanzui said, would help with her magic. His own ability relied on his will over his own chakras. 

“What is it that you can do?” Sunny asked. 

“I can take energy from around and within me,” Hanzui said. “It’s a teaching known as senjutsu.” 

Where Father lived now under jurisdiction of Big Fire, there weren’t any books on her mother’s type of magic—only Hanzui’s kind, but she readily accepted any philosophy to adopt into her own, even if she couldn’t utilize it to the fullest as it wasn’t the magic her mother bestowed on her. 

And so as Hanzui went on to explain senjutsu, Sunny listened intently, hanging on to every word. It wasn’t anything like her sort of magic, but it was something, and there were some ideas she could glean and pick up for herself. 

Hanzui’s teaching could give her the basics she needed to finally hold onto the charter marks, and though she couldn’t quite control them just yet, it was a start. 

\------

The water came up to her ankles, but had she looked down she wouldn’t have even known her feet were wet. The water rippled in the dark, neither cool nor warm, and made no splashing sound when she waddled through them.

A dream or a vision? Sunny couldn’t recall much of what her last memory was, but she wasn’t afraid of this landscape—the black, silent world with its shallow river provided a strange comfort—so she made her way through without much thought for caution. 

“Sunny.” 

A little gasp, she stopped. Listened. Hearing her name again, she searched for the direction of the voice. 

“Sunny.” 

Several paces ahead a tall woman appeared, clad in a long cloak. She smiled at Sunny; her hair was just the same color as hers, but longer. “Sunny, my little one!” 

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear.”

Shock melted in relief, then confusion as a million questions ran through her mind. “Mom, where are you? Dad’s been waiting for years, and I—”

_I need you._ But the words did not come. Still, her mother chuckled as if she had heard her words nonetheless. She stepped closer. 

“I’m sorry I could not be a mother to you as I had wanted. I had to hide after foreseeing the future and fearing what would come to my family.”

“You mean…Dad and me?” Sunny asked. 

Sally Cervantes sighed. “I cannot speak of them to you, Sunny. But you will come to understand. I’ve been away and trying to make things right. There’s a lot of variables at play, things your father won’t know—and no, I cannot warn him. It’ll…disrupt the flow of events. You must understand these laws of divination, Sunny.”

Sunny hung her head. “I understand.”

Sally chuckled. “Don’t be sad, Sunny. There is always hope. I still have some business to tend to, so I cannot be with you. But we can talk here. Some day, you’ll understand.” 

Getting on one knee, she beckoned for Sunny. “You have a mentor now, I see? That would be the only reason you’d be able to see me.” 

Sunny nodded keenly. “He’s a friend of Father’s and a leader of the Magnificent Ten! But he’s a Eastern magician. I don’t think anyone has dealt with Western magic in Big Fire.” 

“Then I will teach you all you need to know. You will possess the best of both worlds.” 

\------

Many miles away, he was suddenly back at home. 

More precisely, he was suddenly seeing through his daughter’s eyes: a storybook perched on her knees. 

“Sunny?” 

“F-father?” 

His daughter’s mouth moved both times: when he spoke, and when she responded. 

“How is this happening?” 

He sneered as he looked about. A blink, and he could just make out the city he was physically in. 

“It’s cold where you are right now,” his daughter’s words filled his mind. “You need to be careful, Father. Stay by Uncle’s side. I see moving-steel and a man in a long rose coat.”

“Sunny? What do you—?” 

\------

“So, what do we have here?” Hanzui said, scratching his beard. “A psychic link to your father? That is a pure bond we must nurture. Focus on this, and you will gain greater control of your magic.” 

“Yes, sir,” Sunny said. Sensing her father nearby, she turned towards him. “Uncle Cervantes has passed, hasn’t he?” 

Alberto heaved a heavy sigh as Hanzui looked up. “I tried not to get her to watch, but our minds were linked up and I couldn’t shake her off.” 

“All the more reason to hone this ability,” Hanzui said, giving Alberto a significant look over Sunny’s head. 

\------

“Did you also access Cervantes’s mind?” Alberto asked later on. Sunny looked up, pencil in hand, paused from her studies, and shook her head. 

Cervantes also possessed the ability to control minds…

“Just a vision, Father,” she explained. “I’m sorry about Uncle. I liked him.” 

\------

The man named Genya did not know of her existence, but Sunny knew of him. She watched him appear in Big Fire headquarters from time to time. At first he almost always was accompanied by Cho-Katsu Komei, and more recently he came alone, joined by hooded goonies working for Big Fire. 

In the few times when she crossed paths with Komei, he paid her no attention. She preferred it that way.

It was the other Magnificent Ten, especially Kawarazaki the Agitator, that Alberto wished for her to meet. The oldest member of the Magnificent Ten, Kawarazaki’s demeanor gave off a far less violent aura, one of calm rivers and mountains, that Sunny was struck wondering why he was in such an organization. He had given up his seat to Hanzui, her father explained to her, but he was still a valuable member of the Magnificent Ten. Powered with telekinesis, Alberto hoped he would offer Sunny a few words of advice as to her own magic. 

“So this is the one who will vacate Cervantes’s seat?” Kawarazaki asked, chuckling as he regarded her. 

Sunny nodded. She remained at the meeting, silent but observant, and she wore earmuffs or was excused when discussions did not require her presence. 

Although she liked Kawarazaki, in the end, she remained with Hanzui. 

\------

With Hanzui, she learned how to open her chakras, the concept of _qi_ and how to manipulate it. With her mother she slowly learned the names of the charter marks so she may memorize them: _uruz_, _gebo_, _wunjo_…

Charter marks and chakras, working together. 

“You are getting the hang of it,” Hanzui praised.

A little smile as she turned to him. “Thank you, Uncle.” 

Outside her window, the world slowly decayed, chipped away by deceit none were privy to. 

\------ 

“This is…unbelievable,” Alberto hissed. 

“What is, Father?” Sunny asked. 

He didn’t seem to have heard her, and she didn’t make any motion of looking up from her work by the oven. But she glimpsed from the corner of her eye as Alberto lit a cigar and took a drag. Light from the dinner table candle swirled in his dark left eye and reflected across his eyepatch.

“Did everything with Fitz go okay, Father?” 

He regarded her from the corner of his eye, and she corrected herself, as she knew her father hated shortened names. Her father and The Fabulous Fitzkerald were employed to oversea the European operations, though that partnership may have ended a while ago. She didn’t always keep track. 

“It’s not him,” Alberto said. “It’s Genya…” 

That’s right. Hadn’t Ivan and he gone to visit Genya at his manor not too long ago? 

“What’s going on?” 

“Nothing that pertains to you.” 

“It’s bothering you, Father.” Sunny smiled and chuckled. “I’ll still find out eventually.” 

A heavy sigh followed as Alberto regarded her. “You will, wouldn’t you?” 

Sunny didn’t reply as she brought over a plate over to the dinner table. Alberto seldom ever had an appetite when he came home from missions, especially when he appeared as banged up as he currently did. He had refused to have her near him and took care of his own injuries by himself. But Sunny always encouraged him to eat, even if it meant just a slice of toast. 

As he accepted the toast from her, she stood there with an amusement in her smile, reminding him of the open bond that linked them both. Alberto felt his daughter’s amusement, just as much as Sunny felt just how troubled he was. Another sigh, exasperated at his daughter’s silent insisting. 

“What I tell you must never leave here,” he said as Sunny returned to her spot and pulled the bowl of stew closer to herself. His voice dropped to a mere whisper, although they were alone, back in the home Sunny was born in, far from Big Fire headquarters. “Not even to Hanzui, understand?”

Sunny nodded and picked up her spoon. “I understand, Father.” 

“I suspect Genya of foul play,” Alberto continued in that low voice. “He’s using Big Fire for his own ends. He’s been acting…very strange tonight…” 

He trailed off as if trying to process something aloud. “I’ve seen that ability before…”

“What ability?”

“There is a missing piece to all this…Big Fire’s mission has always been to govern the world, to bring order, and we thought by means of the Shizuma Drive…but it’s becoming clear that Genya doesn’t share these goals. It’s world destruction he seeks, not world order, but _why_?” 

Sunny said nothing, but she offered a nod to show she was not ignoring her father. As she ate, she kept her eyes on him. 

“There is a reason behind his motive, and I intend to find it. I fear both the IPO and Big Fire may have a common enemy.” 

“Father?” 

Alberto didn’t respond as his face turned sullen. Looking off into the distance, she heard him mutter, “Taisou…”

She knew the name well, knew that this was the man who had killed her uncle. Surges of anger and grief and confusion suddenly flittered past her. What did Taisou have to do with Genya? 

“What happened, Father?” Sunny asked. 

Alberto told her of the battle at Shanghai, of Ivan’s death, and his battle with Taisou which had only turned out to be a ploy to keep him distracted as the rest of the IPO got away to safety. 

Sunny listened in silence. So many layers: Taisou, Genya, Big Fire. She filed everything away in her mind so she may contemplate on them later. 

“So you think Big Fire is being manipulated? Or is there a secret motive behind the operation?” Sunny asked. “Will you tell Hanzui?” 

Alberto chuckled at her suggestion. “I won’t have time to share my concerns. I’ll need to settle some matters myself first. But I do believe there are other cards at play behind our backs, and I suspect Cho-Katsu Komei has a hand in it.” 

“Because they’re always together?” Sunny asked. 

“Because Komei was the one who brought Genya to Big Fire,” Alberto said. “The man’s a manipulator, and I suspect he’s using Genya as a pawn as much as he’s using the rest of us.” 

Without replying, Sunny leaned closer, watching her father, but in that moment, a tiny red dot flashed in his eyepatch. He listened to the message before getting up, muttering something about a Greta Garbo crash. He hadn’t even touched his toast. 

“I would hate to ask this of you, Sunny, but Hanzui has reported that you’ve been making great progress in your studies. When Ivan and I had gone to see Genya, I helped myself with this from his manor, in the event should…we…need it.”

He made for the cabinet, and when he returned he presented to Sunny a tiny coffee spoon. 

She nodded, understanding. “I can use this.” 

\------ 

The jingle of the musical box still lingered in the air. 

Funny, he thought. Everything must have been destroyed. How did his sister's music box survive the explosion? Or was it his mind playing a trick on him? Or the ghost of his past lingering in what remained of his old life, slowly fading away with the sand. 

A shadow fell over him and he looked up. Over the horizon was a tall man. He approached. Said his name was Cho-Katsu Komei. Promised him a new life if he followed him.

There wasn't anything to lose, Emmanuel figured. Komei did not have to speak long to convince him. 

Hate and fear and grief raged in his heart as he followed Komei away from the ruins of Bashtarlle. Feeling that strange flutter again, he turned back, but there was no one there.

He certainly did not see Sunny right behind him, observing every step. 

“Genya,” she said under her breath, and still he did not move. Right behind him now, Sunny placed a hand on the back of his head, and his memories filled her mind. 

\------

Staring up at Komei, refusing to look down or appear meek as she explained her link to her father, Sunny still couldn’t help but curl into herself protectively against Hanzui’s leg as a shiver ran through her. 

Later, she felt her mother try to contact her. That plea always came in the form of sleepiness. Sunny pushed it away. Not now. 

Not until she felt her father’s presence again and was comforted. Comforted until she spoke with her mother again. 

\------

She felt his pain. Her (his) right arm burned something electric as it splintered and shattered against the Eye of Volger. She cried out as tears poured down her cheeks—a strange, pale, water-like oil cascading down the metal of Giant Robo’s face. 

Ivan had died. Giant Robo had fallen. She could hear Daisaku crying for him to get up, and somewhere in the distance her father would soon become locked into battle whose fate was already decided. 

\------

He came to her. Stalked her after Hanzui made her presence known to him, having finally shined a light on her and drew Cho-Katsu’s attention on her.

She wasn’t afraid. She had foreseen this, just as her mother had. 

Komei wasn’t violent. His interests did not lie in matters that would have filled her mother with such deep horrors that would have drawn her presence right into Big Fire headquarters. Sunny’s image was only needed, to pose as a shame, a false idol guarded by Lord Achilles, before the very men she once sat among as family and future colleagues. 

She waited. Waited until Hanzui would sniff out the truth. Waited until she would awaken, and, as she and her mother had strategized, would proceed to the next step. 

\------

The truth, as her mother always taught her, will eventually come out. 

The truth about Emmanuel Von Volger. The truth of the complex web of conspiracies in Big Fire. The truth about Cho-Katsu Komei and his puppeteer act with Big Fire. 

All would be well. Justice would be served. 

Except—

Big Fire himself had woken.

And so will Sunny. 

With Hanzui busy with Komei, the halls, devoid of any Big Fire agents, echoed with the sound of tiny footsteps as Sunny made her way down slowly, calmly. Though her heart did twinge with pain over her father’s death, she utilized Hanzui’s teaching, kept her heart chakra open. They all had to be open. She could not let grief blind her focus. 

She had been attentive to the teachings of her mother and Hanzui both. She had been paying attention to meetings; even in the ones where she was too young to understand or had to place on earmuffs. Her mother had taught her how to still hear; witches had a way of retrieving their own most early memories. They could travel time through their memories, or another’s. 

And Sunny was a real magician, as magicians were expert illusionists, and up until now Sunny had everyone fooled. Even with Komei having stalked her and used her for his own schemes to manipulate others into thinking she was Big Fire…even Komei was fooled. 

But now the real Big Fire had woken, and the siege of Babel would soon transpire. It had all been in her vision. The vision her mother and she had been preparing for all this time. 

It would be the first time she ever partook in a battle herself, and poignantly without the presence of her father. 

But she was ready. 

She had been preparing for this all her life. Hanzui, Kawarazaki, her mother, her father…they all saw the greatness in her.

Opening the double doors and locking herself in her room, Sunny threw out her hands as hundreds of tiny charter marks sparked over her open palms. 

_“GR-3, answer me.”_

She felt the robot answer her through her mind and smiled. Her father wasn’t the only one she had an open mind-link to. Truth be told, it could be with anyone, not just her father. But her mother had instructed her to pretend she could only share her ability with her father. The others couldn’t know. Certainly not Komei. 

She had so much to thank her mother now. Without this chance, Genya’s plan to see the world fall into disarray would still be probable. Komei’s plans could still see fruition. 

She had so much to thank her mother for. And Hanzui as well; she could not be ungrateful for all he had taught her. With the knowledge of both Western and Eastern magic swirling inside her, she has become unstoppable, the only match against Big Fire. Right in this room, she alone would determine the fate of the world. 

_“Garon, answer me. Gaia, answer me. Bacchus, answer me. Neptune, answer me. BlackOx…”_

Each of the robots awoke to her command, each one from every side of the world. She smiled as she imagined Daisaku’s face when Giant Robo himself awoke without the aid of his wristwatch. 

But he’ll come to understand. Like her father, she wasn’t aiding the IPO or the world out of a moral compass or for the ‘warm, fuzzy feelings’. It was to stop a megalomaniac from leading the world to its destruction.

It was to stop Cho-Katsu Komei, the man responsible for her father’s death, for her mother having to go into hiding, for manipulating a traumatized teen into his most wicked pawn, for heralding for most epic battle determining Earth’s fate about to begin. 

She, Sunny the Magician, would make certain the IPO had all the giant robots they could get on their side. 

The witch has woken. 

Sunny smiled and raised her arms higher up. “Robots, heed my call. Come! Take down Big Fire!”


End file.
